“What It Once Meant” is a soon to be released documentary which follows the career of Brooklyn’s own Indecision. This insightful look at one very unique DIY hardcore band takes us from the earliest stages of the band, to their days of non-stop touring, to vocalist changes, and then back to the current day where the band plays a few shows a year as compared to the 100’s that were the norm maybe a decade or so earlier. Old live clips, flyers, photos and more including interviews with all of the bands members and their friends makes for a very thorough viewing. A lot of time and effort went into this DVD and it shows. We caught up with producer Derek Morse of Morse Code Productions and got some details on how the doc was made and everything that you might want to know about it before buying it… (which is highly recommended) if you were a fan of this band. Interview conducted in March of 2015.
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PHOTOS BY: JUSTIN BORUCKI
IE: Hey Derek, can you start off by telling us HOW and WHEN the idea for an Indecision documentary got started? Did you approach the band about it or was it them contacting you?
Derek: Back in the 90's I used to book shows at the Hanover House in CT. Jamey Jasta, who I used to help with his booking company with things he needed to get done for Hatebreed called me one day and said that Indecision was looking to fill a date in CT for a tour. I had been looking to book them for a CT show but things just never lined up. That show was the first time I had met the band. Fast forward a few years... I had moved to NYC to pursue working in the film industry and ran into Rachel at a show and over time became friendly with the whole band. Rachel would show me photos and videos and tell me stories from touring with Indecision and I was amazed of the amount of shit that the band went through over the years when they were touring full time. I think it was around 2008 I was looking to do a feature length project and I had brought up the idea of doing a documentary about the band since I knew they had enough content, as well as photos and video to support the content. But the idea was kind of just thrown around for a few years until 2010 when we actually started working on it
IE: Besides yourself (who is the producer for this documentary) you have Rachel from Indecision as the executive producer and Frank Pavich as the associate producer. For the average man on the street like myself who doesn't know the first thing about making something like this what does that all translate to when it came down to who did what in the making of this?
Derek: Producer runs the day to day operation, organizes and spearheads the project. An associate producer has a hand in some types of creative aspects of a project and an executive producer is the person that provides the budget for a project.
IE: For those who may not know the name Frank Pavich, he produced the 1990's Velebit Productions “NYHC Documentary” with Madball, 25 Ta Life, Crown Of Thornz, No Redeeming Social Value and many more. Did having someone who had a rock solid hardcore documentary under their belt already give you more confidence going into the making of this and what did Frank bring to the table from his past experiences?
Derek: Rachel actually put me in touch with Frank because she saw a post that he was looking for a sound mixer for a short film that he was producing. “What It Once Meant” was in the early stages and Frank offered to help in any way he could. Since Frank already had a documentary under his belt and is really great at interviewing people, I asked if he would want to produce the interviews from the questions I provided him. Frank was really great at finding questions within the answers from another question. Having him involved in that part of the documentary put me at ease so I could focus on the audio and working with the camera operator to get cool looking angles for the interviews. Frank also provided us with the footage from the WNYU radio show that he didn't use in the NYHC documentary.
IE: In the making of “What It Once Meant” you used a ton of old live footage as well as photos and flyers. Where did all of the old material come from and exactly how much material did you have to go through?
Derek: All the videos the band had from multiple people that they had saved over the years. All the personal band photos came from Rachel. A lot of live shots we got from Justin Borucki. Since Justin was the photographer/designer for all of Indecision's record covers he had a treasure trove of out takes from the albums. In the end we had over 200 hours of VHS footage, a little over 1500 photos and 15 hours of HD footage that we had to dig through and piece together.
IE: Besides the task of sorting everything out with photos, flyers and live footage what were some of the other major challenges in this docs making?
Derek: Most people don't know that for every minute you seen on screen there is about 2 hours or more of work that went into creating that one minute. At first juggling all the material for the project was kind of frustrating but once the editor Rob Soucy created a work flow it went pretty smooth. There were many times we would talk about a few seconds of footage that we saw on one of the tapes. Then we would have to go through trying to re-find the clip amongst all the VHS footage. Rob and I work in the film industry so we worked on this documentary in between other projects. I would get a feature film or a reality show for a month and Rob got a project in China for 6 months so just finding the time to sit down and get it done was the biggest challenge.
IE: It's obvious that the live footage you had to work with did not have the same quality as compared to today's stuff that we see shared over the Internet. You actually did a really good job of slicing everything up and not using too much of any one song in any one spot. Were you worried at any point that the live footage wouldn't hold up (looks wise) for the final product?
Derek: No not at all. We actually used the effect of bad VHS footage throughout the documentary and in some places it actually helped us make a cut or transition. The VHS footage was in really good condition and after we changed the codec of the footage to 720 it gave the VHS what we call a milky or creamy look. We actually shot the interviews in 720 and not 1080. Once we saw the VHS against the interview footage it actually made the interview footage look like they were shot in a higher resolution.
IE: There are 2 times where you guys took a prank phone call made by Justin to a music store and made it into a really cool animated thing. Who came up with that idea and who did the drawings? It came out really cool by the way.
Derek: Awesome thanks. I really wanted this project to embody the bands records as a whole. Early on I came up with the idea of animating some of the prank phone calls. Actually there was supposed to be two different ones but since animation is so tedious we had to cut it back to one. You really have to go through frame by frame which is a very long process. Luckily a friend put me in touch with one of his friends who did the animation. The drawings for the animation were done by Tony Price who is a friend of the band. There was a point I thought the animation wasn't going to happen at all but I'm really glad that it was able to be a part of the project.
IE: What was your thinking behind the current day interviews you did for this? I have seen similar documentaries where they wheel out what seems like a truck load of people to reminisce about a topic but with this one outside of the band, Roger from AF and Lou Sick of It All you kind of kept it simple and included only a handful of people outside of those mentioned.
Derek: Yeah I know what you mean. I didn't want to put people in the movie just for the sake of showing this person or that person. I wanted the stories within the doc to be told by the band in their words. I really wanted to keep it to the core of what made the band tick and the people that were in involved and actually there. Roger put Indecision on their first big show at the Wetlands and later produced “Release The Cure” and Lou (Sick Of It All ) wanted Indecision for the “Life On The Ropes” tour which was their first bigger US tour.
IE: I have yet to see the layout. Is there going to be anything special in regards to inserts/photos or anything else or just a DVD and a box?
Derek: Yeah the DVD will come with the bands scrapbook in zine format. The scrapbook contains show flyers, hand written lyrics, and tour passes
IE: What about your distro plans? This seems like a pretty grass roots DIY project. How many are you making to start and what will make this documentary a success in your eyes when all is said and done?
Derek: At first we're pressing 1000 DVD’s. In 2010 Rachel and I started the label Morse Code Recordings . We actually started the label to just release this documentary but that turned into us releasing MPB DNR on vinyl and finding some younger bands that we believed in. We are always looking for bands that try to dish it up a little different and put their own spin on hardcore. Manners are some younger guys from Connecticut that we found back in 2011 that have a lot of heart and I feel are putting a different spin on hardcore. This documentary will be our 8th release. Everyone judges success differently. The fact that it was actually finished as well as the positive feedback we've gotten about the project means it is a success for me.
IE: You guys had a weekend in January where you screened the doc in Brooklyn. How did that go and what was the reaction to it? There was a paid admission to get in and it sold out both days, correct?
Derek: The screenings were both awesome - the Sunday screening was sold out and the Saturday one was about 75%. I added the second day so as many people who wanted to could see the project on a big screen and a big sound system. From the reaction that I heard all the jokes came off as funny to the viewers so I couldn't be happier about how that went.
IE: What's in store for yourself and Morse Code once this gets out to the public?
Derek: The project was supposed to start shipping on Feb 27th but the manufacture had a slight problem with one of their replication machines. The problem is fixed but that also pushed us back from having the DVD’s. We are still waiting on word from them as to when will we have them. Right now we just relocated to southern CA and I did most of this interview in a truck driving across this country. As far as what's next I have a couple of ideas for more documentaries but at this point they are just ideas.
SCREEN SHOTS TAKEN FROM "WHAT IT ONCE MEANT"
TOM-VOCALS
JUSTIN-GUITAR
BAGO-BASS
RACHEL-GUITAR
TOM-DRUMS
ARTIE-VOCALS
WATCH THE "WHAT IT ONCE MEANT" TRAILER BELOW
DEREK MORSE...PRODUCER OF "WHAT IT ONCE MEANT"
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